“I would say that the fact that there are rumors of that type just confirms for you that this is an important console for next year,” Raines said in the call. "[NX] will have physical media, we will play a role in it, our preowned business will also play a role. So we’re excited about that."

More recently, a financial report from a Japanese chip manufacturer suggested that the system might use NOR flash-based game storage rather than the now-standard optical discs. Raines and fellow GameStop executives said they didn't have any specific knowledge on that score.

That hasn't stopped people from assuming a download-only home console is coming, though. Back in 2012, early rumors suggested that Microsoft might get rid of discs on the Xbox One as a way to control profits "lost" to used game resellers. Even when disc-based Xbox One games were later confirmed, Microsoft had to do a quick 180 to prevent backlash against proposed restrictions on used game sales, suggesting console players might not be ready to give up the idea of fully tradable physical media.

In any case, GameStop thinks the NX's continued support for physical retail games will be good news for the retailer's bottom line. "Should the new NX perform only slightly better than the Wii U, it would still generate $2.7 billion of incremental sales over the first two years," GameStop EVP of Strategy and Business Development Mike Hogan said on the call. "Should it perform at even half of the level of the Wii, it would generate $7.5 billion in incremental sales over that timeframe."

Latest Ars Video >

First Look: Xbox Adaptive Controller

Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech visits Microsoft for a first-hand look at the company's new controller that focuses on accessibility.

First Look: Xbox Adaptive Controller

First Look: Xbox Adaptive Controller

Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech visits Microsoft for a first-hand look at the company's new controller that focuses on accessibility.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

There was never a plan to get rid of discs on the Xbox One given serious consideration. The idea was to remove DRM from the discs, so that rights were managed digitally just as on PC, and the disc was merely an installation medium

And that would be an egregious deal-breaker for a whole lot of people who actually like to sell, trade, or lend their games freely, as well as folks who enjoy paying far less for an effectively identical used game.

There was never a plan to get rid of discs on the Xbox One given serious consideration. The idea was to remove DRM from the discs, so that rights were managed digitally just as on PC, and the disc was merely an installation medium

There was no block on used games, that was Sony. Merely that transactions had to go through Microsoft to change ownership of the keys. This was first and foremost to stop Gamestop from selling stolen and fast flipped games to people instead of new copied that the actual development studios rely on for royalties and bonuses. It doesn't matter if 2 million people play your game if you only get paid for 800k

They basically had planned to remove disc games because the discs required authentication to prove ownership. It basically literally only was delivery of the installation files so used games or playing games without internet could have been an issue.

You could argue that PC gaming hasn't done away with discs, but these days they're literally just installation media and useless if the included key is consumed. That's effectively doing away with them, since they can't be lent to others or resold at that point, making them wastes of plastic and money.

Hell for some of us they're useless as install media because our internet connection can transfer data faster than the DVD-ROM drive is capable of reading at.

You mean the one system that actually needs retailers to help them sell their system, are making sure retailers don't wash their hands of them?

You don't say....

Given data caps and lousy connections throughout much of the supposedly civilised world, the download-only model isn't coming anytime soon.

One of many reasons. Video games are one of the major go-to gifts from relatives for birthdays and holidays. There's a lot of appeal in having something in a box to wrap that isn't yet another gift card.

You mean the one system that actually needs retailers to help them sell their system, are making sure retailers don't wash their hands of them?

You don't say....

Given data caps and lousy connections throughout much of the supposedly civilised world, the download-only model isn't coming anytime soon.

Google Fiber is keeping everything data cap free here. The rest of the US isn't so fortunate though. Plot twist, game companies strike deals with ISPs to get their content zero-rated...and charge more for their games because they have to pay ISPs for zero-rating. Tom Wheeler better step in and stop this before any ISP sets this precedent..oh wait..ATT wireless is doing this already and I'm sure it'll spread to wired. (T-Mobile is different because they don't charge for zero-rating...yet).

Edit: I guess this isn't much of a plot twist, it's just expected of our extortionist ISPs.

You mean the one system that actually needs retailers to help them sell their system, are making sure retailers don't wash their hands of them?

You don't say....

Given data caps and lousy connections throughout much of the supposedly civilised world, the download-only model isn't coming anytime soon.

Yep. AT&T put a 600GB cap on my connection last month.

Still salty about that. If I pay the $30/mo extra, once my current promotion expires I'll be paying $122.53 per month for a 45/5 connection. No TV, just Internet. My apartment complex is wonderful like that and signed some sort of stupid community agreement with AT&T so that AT&T is the only provider.

There was never a plan to get rid of discs on the Xbox One given serious consideration. The idea was to remove DRM from the discs, so that rights were managed digitally just as on PC, and the disc was merely an installation medium

And that would be an egregious deal-breaker for a whole lot of people who actually like to sell, trade, or lend their games freely, as well as folks who enjoy paying far less for an effectively identical used game.

Yes, but you agree that the Xbox One wasn't doing away with discs?

I'm not sure what you're asking me. That the Xbox One would have an optical drive was a foregone conclusion. The delivery and licensing of their games was what was at stake and under scrutiny. I primarily care about the consumer's ownership rights being maintained, and Microsoft initially planned to eliminate that until backlash forced them to do a 180.

You could argue that PC gaming hasn't done away with discs, but these days they're literally just installation media and useless if the included key is consumed. That's effectively doing away with them, since they can't be lent to others or resold at that point, making them wastes of plastic and money.

Hell for some of us they're useless as install media because our internet connection can transfer data faster than the DVD-ROM drive is capable of reading at.

At least from Gamestop's perspective (which is what this article is about), they would still have something to sell. Ignoring the fact that used games are where they make most of their money.

You mean the one system that actually needs retailers to help them sell their system, are making sure retailers don't wash their hands of them?

You don't say....

Given data caps and lousy connections throughout much of the supposedly civilised world, the download-only model isn't coming anytime soon.

Google Fiber is keeping everything data cap free here. The rest of the US isn't so fortunate though. Plot twist, game companies strike deals with ISPs to get their content zero-rated...and charge more for their games because they have to pay ISPs for zero-rating. Tom Wheeler better step in and stop this before any ISP sets this precedent..oh wait..ATT wireless is doing this already and I'm sure it'll spread to wired. (T-Mobile is different because they don't charge for zero-rating...yet).

Game prices aren't going to go up because of that. If they thought they could charge more and enough people would still buy them, they'd be charging those higher prices already. It's the game publishers/studios that actually lose in the scenario, so I don't see them jumping on that possibility if they can avoid it.

You could argue that PC gaming hasn't done away with discs, but these days they're literally just installation media and useless if the included key is consumed. That's effectively doing away with them, since they can't be lent to others or resold at that point, making them wastes of plastic and money.

Hell for some of us they're useless as install media because our internet connection can transfer data faster than the DVD-ROM drive is capable of reading at.

PC has essentially killed discs. They don't even really make sense at this point as other than something to hold and collect. The new Doom for instance comes on 1 DVD, it installs 10GB from this DVD and then you download the remaining 40GB. It's not the only game to do this either. It's not even useful as an installation medium anymore.

You could argue that PC gaming hasn't done away with discs, but these days they're literally just installation media and useless if the included key is consumed. That's effectively doing away with them, since they can't be lent to others or resold at that point, making them wastes of plastic and money.

Hell for some of us they're useless as install media because our internet connection can transfer data faster than the DVD-ROM drive is capable of reading at.

PC has essentially killed discs. They don't even really make sense at this point as other than something to hold and collect. The new Doom for instance comes on 1 DVD, it installs 10GB from this DVD and then you download the remaining 40GB. It's not even useful as an installation medium anymore.

I don't even have an internal optical drive in my desktops, and haven't for years. (I do have a USB one, for the rare occasions I need to do something like rip a CD.) Not much point any more, the last one I had was pretty much only used to install the OS, but now most motherboards and OS installers support USB installation.

You could argue that PC gaming hasn't done away with discs, but these days they're literally just installation media and useless if the included key is consumed. That's effectively doing away with them, since they can't be lent to others or resold at that point, making them wastes of plastic and money.

Hell for some of us they're useless as install media because our internet connection can transfer data faster than the DVD-ROM drive is capable of reading at.

PC has essentially killed discs. They don't even really make sense at this point as other than something to hold and collect. The new Doom for instance comes on 1 DVD, it installs 10GB from this DVD and then you download the remaining 40GB. It's not even useful as an installation medium anymore.

I don't even have an internal optical drive in my desktops, and haven't for years. (I do have a USB one, for the rare occasions I need to do something like rip a CD.) Not much point any more, the last one I had was pretty much only used to install the OS, but now most motherboards and OS installers support USB installation.

Shit, my case doesn't even have a slot for an optical drive (I too have a USB DVD drive that I never use, especially because any of my legacy CD/DVD based software have been archived as an ISO)

Not surprising in the least. Given their history it seems to me that Nintendo will be the very last company to abandon physical media. At any rate, I think it could be a long time before you have a digital only console, like another 10 years maybe.

Hopefully that doesn't mean the NX will ship with a tiny HDD like the Wii U. AN external HDD is a big deal or anything, but why not come with something that can hold more than 3 games.

Why would the console be designed to hold more than 3 games when you can buy the games at retail?

I imagine the NX will sell on something very close to a 64GB SD card, which retails for $15 and probably closer to $8 in raw NAND form. Burned at the factory and then set to RO mode, ship with some kind of hash to verify integrity, and a smaller NAND chip that can be written to for patches and updates.

So you get a chip that reads as fast as the fastest blu-ray discs, is updatable, and can be played offline.

You could argue that PC gaming hasn't done away with discs, but these days they're literally just installation media and useless if the included key is consumed. That's effectively doing away with them, since they can't be lent to others or resold at that point, making them wastes of plastic and money.

Hell for some of us they're useless as install media because our internet connection can transfer data faster than the DVD-ROM drive is capable of reading at.

PC has essentially killed discs. They don't even really make sense at this point as other than something to hold and collect. The new Doom for instance comes on 1 DVD, it installs 10GB from this DVD and then you download the remaining 40GB. It's not the only game to do this either. It's not even useful as an installation medium anymore.

I haven't had an optical drive in my computer for something like five years now. There's just no point. Driver discs are pretty much always outdated, I buy all my games on Steam or similar platforms, and it's faster to do operating system installs from a flash drive than it is from optical media.

The only real drawback is that I can't watch anything from my movie collection on my computer without pirating it first. Not that I see any problem with pirating a copy of a movie you already own, but it's lower quality and takes longer than just sticking the disc in the computer. But at least I never have any issues with obtrusive DRM.

Nintendo was the last company to produce ROM cartridges so it's not surprising. They tend to be very conservative about formats. Flash cards of some sort are a real option though, they've already used them successfully for the DS and 3DS. A 64GB flash card would cost them less than $!0 and I could see Nintendo going that way to differentiate.

I wish the NOR rumor would die. NOR flash is simply not economical compared to NAND. A 32GB NAND cart would probably close $3 to $5. The same cart using NOR would cost closer to $25. There is a reason that NAND has essentially take over the flash market (outside of some very small low performance niches) and it isn't because it sounds cooler.

Nintendo was the last company to produce ROM cartridges so it's not surprising. They tend to be very conservative about formats. Flash cards of some sort are a real option though, they've already used them successfully for the DS and 3DS. A 64GB flash card would cost them less than $!0 and I could see Nintendo going that way to differentiate.

If I'm not mistaken, their reluctance to abandon cartridges was over fears about piracy being easier on a disc based console, not due to any convincing argument about the technical merits of cartridges (which sucked out loud on every front except load times). They were mostly right, but they were just sticking their fingers in the dike, and in the end even their cartridges were pirated.

I don't know if they learned their lesson, but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Nintendo were still chasing that mythical format that couldn't be pirated.

"Should the new NX perform only slightly better than the Wii U, it would still generate $2.7 billion of incremental sales over the first two years," GameStop EVP of Strategy and Business Development Mike Hogan said on the call. "Should it perform at even half of the level of the Wii, it would generate $7.5 billion in incremental sales over that timeframe."

Hopefully that doesn't mean the NX will ship with a tiny HDD like the Wii U. AN external HDD is a big deal or anything, but why not come with something that can hold more than 3 games.

Why would the console be designed to hold more than 3 games when you can buy the games at retail?

I imagine the NX will sell on something very close to a 64GB SD card, which retails for $15 and probably closer to $8 in raw NAND form. Burned at the factory and then set to RO mode, ship with some kind of hash to verify integrity, and a smaller NAND chip that can be written to for patches and updates.

So you get a chip that reads as fast as the fastest blu-ray discs, is updatable, and can be played offline.

I don't see any reason why they can't just put in a 500GB HDD so that I can have all my games installed and playable at any time. I've got a 2TB on my U (overkill), and I haven't noticed any issue with game loading speeds. I don't buy physical media anymore and haven't for years, as I have been primarily a PC gamer (I really bought the U for Mario Maker, but have many other games on it.)

You mean the one system that actually needs retailers to help them sell their system, are making sure retailers don't wash their hands of them?

You don't say....

Given data caps and lousy connections throughout much of the supposedly civilised world, the download-only model isn't coming anytime soon.

Yep. AT&T put a 600GB cap on my connection last month.

Still salty about that. If I pay the $30/mo extra, once my current promotion expires I'll be paying $122.53 per month for a 45/5 connection. No TV, just Internet. My apartment complex is wonderful like that and signed some sort of stupid community agreement with AT&T so that AT&T is the only provider.

You might want to read this, if you can get another provider to offer service you should be able to get them into your apartment.

You could argue that PC gaming hasn't done away with discs, but these days they're literally just installation media and useless if the included key is consumed. That's effectively doing away with them, since they can't be lent to others or resold at that point, making them wastes of plastic and money.

Hell for some of us they're useless as install media because our internet connection can transfer data faster than the DVD-ROM drive is capable of reading at.

PC has essentially killed discs. They don't even really make sense at this point as other than something to hold and collect. The new Doom for instance comes on 1 DVD, it installs 10GB from this DVD and then you download the remaining 40GB. It's not the only game to do this either. It's not even useful as an installation medium anymore.

I haven't had an optical drive in my computer for something like five years now. There's just no point. Driver discs are pretty much always outdated, I buy all my games on Steam or similar platforms, and it's faster to do operating system installs from a flash drive than it is from optical media.

The only real drawback is that I can't watch anything from my movie collection on my computer without pirating it first. Not that I see any problem with pirating a copy of a movie you already own, but it's lower quality and takes longer than just sticking the disc in the computer. But at least I never have any issues with obtrusive DRM.

Also you don't have to deal with endless previews when you download the video file. That's one of the biggest reasons I avoid DVDs/Blueray.

Not surprising in the least. Given their history it seems to me that Nintendo will be the very last company to abandon physical media.

From the digital side of things, Nintendo could certainly go digital-only whenever they want. It's already possible to go digital-only on 3DS and Wii U and that's unlikely to change with NX. They also promote digital games heavily, offer rewards for buying digital, and offer discounts for digital copies through sales and My Nintendo.

I could certainly see them staying with physical media for a long time for other reasons, but not because they aren't ready to go digital-only.

You mean the one system that actually needs retailers to help them sell their system, are making sure retailers don't wash their hands of them?

You don't say....

Given data caps and lousy connections throughout much of the supposedly civilised world, the download-only model isn't coming anytime soon.

Yep. AT&T put a 600GB cap on my connection last month.

Still salty about that. If I pay the $30/mo extra, once my current promotion expires I'll be paying $122.53 per month for a 45/5 connection. No TV, just Internet. My apartment complex is wonderful like that and signed some sort of stupid community agreement with AT&T so that AT&T is the only provider.

You might want to read this, if you can get another provider to offer service you should be able to get them into your apartment.

I know that exclusivity deals were outlawed, but I don't even know if that would apply here. I'm sure they've managed to scrape together some weasel words that bypass that. All of the apartment complexes around here are like that.

There was never a plan to get rid of discs on the Xbox One given serious consideration. The idea was to remove DRM from the discs, so that rights were managed digitally just as on PC, and the disc was merely an installation medium

There was no block on used games, that was Sony. Merely that transactions had to go through Microsoft to change ownership of the keys. This was first and foremost to stop Gamestop from selling stolen and fast flipped games to people instead of new copied that the actual development studios rely on for royalties and bonuses. It doesn't matter if 2 million people play your game if you only get paid for 800k

I'm going to have to call bullshit on all of that. There most certainly was a block on used games in the original announcement of XB1. They had a deal with Gamestop where they'd relicense (for a cut of the proceeds, natch), but they would have frozen out mom-and-pop shops and eBay/Craigslist/Agora/flea market/garage sale/etc. sellers entirely.

Also, Sony never had any plans to block used games, at least not any they made public. In fact, after the XB1 announcement, they famously put out this video mocking the whole thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA

And if you have any evidence that Gamestop, as an institution, is condoning the mass sale of stolen games, I'm all ears.

Hopefully that doesn't mean the NX will ship with a tiny HDD like the Wii U. AN external HDD is a big deal or anything, but why not come with something that can hold more than 3 games.

Why would the console be designed to hold more than 3 games when you can buy the games at retail?

I imagine the NX will sell on something very close to a 64GB SD card, which retails for $15 and probably closer to $8 in raw NAND form. Burned at the factory and then set to RO mode, ship with some kind of hash to verify integrity, and a smaller NAND chip that can be written to for patches and updates.

So you get a chip that reads as fast as the fastest blu-ray discs, is updatable, and can be played offline.

I don't see any reason why they can't just put in a 500GB HDD so that I can have all my games installed and playable at any time. I've got a 2TB on my U (overkill), and I haven't noticed any issue with game loading speeds. I don't buy physical media anymore and haven't for years, as I have been primarily a PC gamer (I really bought the U for Mario Maker, but have many other games on it.)

Um, because they don't see any profit nor feature that requires they need a 500GB HDD?

I think in general the reason people worry so much about not having physical media, is the very limited rights you have as an "owner" but really more of a leasee. Nintendo in particularly would worry me as their digital rights management was freaking awful on the Wii-U and 3DS. Your 3DS was lost? well better be ready to buy all those games again, because Nintendo could not give a shit about you or your lost games.

After experiencing the loss of my 3DS and having to buy a lot of games over, i'm done with digital games from Nintendo.